Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA) is an open, published standard for an on-chip bus useful in designing systems-on-a-chip (SoC) and application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-based microcontrollers. It is used in a wide range of mobile, embedded, and low-power environments. Since its inception, the scope of AMBA has gone far beyond microcontroller devices, and is now widely used on a range of ASIC and SoC parts, including applications processors used in modern portable mobile devices like smartphones. The AMBA standard specifies connection and management of functional blocks in appropriate systems, and is useful in designing systems with multiple controllers and/or peripherals.
The third generation of AMBA includes the advanced extensible interface (AXI), which is designed to accommodate high-performance, high-clock-frequency systems.